The fight for Filipino veterans' equity: A struggle against racism (tags)
After 63 years, the U.S. Senate finally passed the Veterans Expanded Benefits Bill on April 24 with a vote of 96 to 1. But can this act of Congress giveA back justice and equity for Filipino veterans who were denied their rights for 63 long years? The Philippines was a colony of the United States when World War II broke out in 1941. In a hurry to defend its colonial possessions in the Pacific, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt formed the United States Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) and integrated the 70,000-strong Commonwealth Army of the Philippines into the 30,000-troop U.S. army in the Philippines on July 26, 1941.
In the light of the profound economic and political crisis in the Philippines today, what could be the significance of celebrating the one-hundred year anniversary of the coming of Filipino contract labor to Hawaii? Are Filipinos the new compradors for the militarist U.S. Empire? Or are they harbingers of a new generation of combatants from the oppressed communities? At the turn of the century, the revolutionary organizer Rosa Luxemburg elegized the dismal plight of the subjugated natives. Today, US Special Forces are back to reconquer the neocolony, with the natives no longer smiling, now up in arms, united with people of color in Venezuela, Palestine, Hawaii, Nepal, Mexico, and other battlefronts of our beleaguered planet. Whither the Filipino diaspora?
Filipinos—Forgotten Heroes of the UFW (tags)
Filipino labor leaders played pivotal roles in organizing labor unions and fighting for farm workers’ rights